A United Methodist minister's musings on faith, culture and just about anything or anybody that strikes his fancy.

On Welfare & Republican Tyranny

Corporations cannot attack conservatives and expect us not to fight back.”

— Lt. Gov. Casey Cable of Georgia, who aims to punish Delta Airlines for making a business decision

Not all tyrants look scary like Fidel Castro or Mussolini or President Putin. This happy-face tyrant who is the leader of the Senate in Georgia wants to punish a Big Business for — eek!!! — a business decision that is supposed to be judged and possibly punished by its customers, not by government!

There have been so many stories making me go “Wow!” in a bad way lately that I could comment on a dozen of them in the news today alone.

The lieutenant governor there — supposedly a conservative Republican who is running for promotion to governor — threatened to deny corporate welfare in the form of a pending tax exemption to Delta Airlines.

This is because Delta had the audacity to make a business decision that the supposedly conservative Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, who made the threat, didn’t cotton to.

Delta’s sin was announcing it will no longer offer discounted fares to NRA members to attend their annual meetings.

Delta also kindly asked the NRA to remove any references to their company from the NRA website.

The gentleman from Georgia sees this business decision and request by a Big Business, which was promised your typical corporate welfare in the form of a big tax break for jet fuel, as “an attack on conservatives.”

And he’s right, right??? Attacks on the NRA just don’t get anymore vicious, do they?

Heinous!

* * *

Oh by the way! Is being a conservative a requirement for membership in the National Rifle Association?

Does the NRA require applicants to swear that they are conservatives?

And if so, exactly how do they define “conservative?”

Does a member have to swear allegiance whatever the NRA idea of conservatism is in order to remain a member?

Maybe somebody in Cagle’s office can answer these questions.

* * *

But back to Delta Airlines.

Its decision to discontinue NRA benefits to customers could be construed by some pro-business conservatives like myself, maybe most genuine, principled, free-market conservatives, as a business decision Delta Airlines made.

It’s not as if Delta Airlines announced, “We have decided to do this because NRA members are Boobs and we don’t need their money!”

I would think some of Delta’s own shareholders are outraged, and that some are very happy about the decision.

But so it goes in the free-market system, right?

This just in to News Central: The way the free market works, Delta’s customers — and politicians in Georgia — are free to use some other airline if they don’t like Delta’s business decision.

Somebody please explain to me how I’m wrong if I’ve been so wrong about American capitalism my whole life.

* * *

By the way, United Airlines customers also have the right to stop flying with United, which has made the exact same business decision as Delta, along with many car rental companies, Best Western, MetLife and a growing number of Big Businesses (who are receiving welfare from governments from local to federal levels every day; how true-blue conservative government haters are OK with this has always been a mystery).

It seems to me as an American who is 100 percent pro-business and pro-capitalism — pro-ethical capitalism, that is, as opposed to what we have in runaway corruption in business today — that people in government like Lt. Gov.Cagle are tyrants.

I mean, this is what tyrants in government do, don’t they? That’s my reading of history and political history anyway. They punish people and companies (and supposedly corporations are people too, as dapper Mitt Romney says) when people aren’t 100 percent on their side.

I’ve argued for years that most of the modern conservative Republicans are not genuine, principled conservatives at all.

This proves my point one more time.

I mean, I might be wrong, but I don’t think it would ever have entered the mind of Ronald Reagan to punish any business, big or small, with the authority he held in government, because of some Big Business decision he didn’t cotton to.

This threat against Delta is the very kind government over-reach that conservative Republicans have condemned forever.

Delta’s corporate leaders, employees and supports should be afraid: Cagle might just be coming for their guns if they don’t get in line with him.